Network Solutions, LLC is an American-based technology company founded in 1979. The domain name registration business has become the most important division of the company. By January 2009, Network Solutions managed more than 6.6 million domain names. In addition to being a domain name registrar, Network Solutions provides web services such as web hosting, website design and online marketing, including search engine optimization and pay per click management.

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Network Solutions Inc.(NSI) started as a technology consulting company incorporated by Gary Desler, Ty Grigsby, Emmit J. McHenry, and Ed Peters in Washington D.C. in January 1979.[3] In its first few years, the company focused on systems programming services, primarily in the IBM environment. Annual revenues passed $1 million in 1982, growing to $18.5 million in 1986.

John Dillon reported in MediaFilter.org: "Initially, the service was subsidized by the government. But, in May 1993, the National Science Foundation privatized the name registry (InterNIC - Internet Network Information Center) and paid NSI $5.9 million to administer it. In September 1995, NSI instituted the fee system. A few months earlier, it had been bought out by Science Applications International Corp (SAIC)."[4]

In 2000, Network Solutions was acquired by VeriSign, Inc. for $21 billion.[3]

In 2003 nearly 90% of the company's revenue was from domain-name registrations, said Network Solutions then-Chief Executive W.G. Champ Mitchell. Since 2005, the company has added 69 services and products and today these new offerings are fueling Network Solutions' growth. Now only 45% of the company's revenue comes from domain-name registrations.

On October 17, 2003, VeriSign announced the sale of the registrar business, which continued to operate under the branding Network Solutions, to Pivotal Equity Group.[3] (VeriSign still retains the registry business which had been originally created within Network Solutions prior to VeriSign's acquisition of the company.)

During January, 2006, Network Solutions acquired the company MonsterCommerce, co-founded by Stephanie Leffler and Ryan Noble in Belleville, Illinois.

On February 6, 2007, Network Solutions announced that General Atlantic, a private equity firm, would acquire Network Solutions from Najafi Companies (formerly Pivotal Private Equity).[7] Although terms of the deal were not released, the Wall Street Journal reported in a story on May 30, 2007 that the price tag was "around $800 million."[8]

At the end of July, 2007, Network Solutions had 6,659,150 domains under management and was in the top five wholesale domain registrars following Go Daddy with 19,709,215 domains and eNom with 7,646,676 domains. Tucows, the largest publicly traded registrar, has 6,622,982 domains under management with its recent acquisition of ItsYourDomain.com. Melbourne IT, a publicly traded company located in Australia, trailed with 4,664,019 domains under management.[9]

On November 2, 2009, Tim Kelly, president of Network Solutions replaced Dunbar as CEO. Roy continued to act as chairman and advisor to Network Solutions.[11]

In August 2011, it was announced that Network Solutions would be bought by Web.com for $405 million and 18 million shares.[12] On October 27, 2011, Web.com announced the completion of the acquisition.[13] This was immediately followed by the departure of CEO Kelly, and other leadership. Large scale employee layoffs began the following day, as well. By December 31, 2011, over half of the office space in the Herndon, Virginia headquarters had been vacated, and on March 31, 2012, the company's Belleville, Illinois office was closed.[14]

Network Solutions, Inc. (NSI) first operated the domain name system (DNS) registry under a sub-contract with the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) in September 1991. NSI gave out names in .com, .org, .mil, .gov, .edu and .net for free, along with free Internet Protocol (IP) address blocks. This work was performed at the Chantilly offices of GSI, the primary contractor, a corporation formed by Infonet to avoid foreign ownership of U.S. government contracts.[citation needed] The Network Information Center at SRI International had performed the work under Elizabeth J. Feinler since 1972.[15]

In 1992, NSI was the sole bidder on a grant from the National Science Foundation to further develop the domain name registration service for the Internet. In 1993,[3] NSI was granted an exclusive contract by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to be the sole domain name registrar for .com (commerce), .net (network) and .org (organization) Top Level Domain (TLD) names, a continuation of work NSI had already been doing.[16] NSI also maintained the central database of assigned names called WHOIS. A contract was given to Boeing to operate the .mil registry, and was also performed by NSI under subcontract.

In 1995, the National Science Foundation gave Network Solutions authority to charge for domain name registrations. Network Solutions charged $100 for two years registration. The fee was imposed on all domains and 30% of this revenue went to the NSF to create an "Internet Intellectual Infrastructure Fund."[16][17][18] In 1997, a lawsuit was filed charging Network Solutions with antitrust violations with regard to domain names.[19] The 30% of the registration fee that went to the NSF was ruled by a court to be an illegal tax.[20][21] This led to a reduction in the domain name registration fee to $70.[22][23]

In the 1990s, Network Solutions implemented a policy of censoring domain names. This came to light when Jeff Gold attempted to register the domain name shitakemushrooms.com but was unable to. Further aggravating the controversy was Network Solutions' automated screens blocked the registration of shitakemushrooms.com, though the domain name 'shit.com' had been successfully registered.[24] Network Solutions argued that it was within its First Amendment rights to block words it found offensive, even though it was operating pursuant to contract with a Federal agency.[16][25]

Network Solutions' $100 charge, which many parties believed was excessive, in addition to its monopoly position in the market, was one of the contributing pressures that resulted in the creation of the International Ad Hoc Committee and its failed attempt to take control of the domain name system, and to the US Department of Commerce, NTIA releasing the White Paper and ultimately contracting with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to administer the DNS.

With the formation of ICANN in 1998, the domain name industry opened up to partial competition, with NSI retaining its monopoly on .com, .net and .org but having to recognize a separation of registry, which manages the underlying database of domain names, and registrar, which acts as a retail provider of domain names. To achieve this separation, NSI created a "firewall" between the two new divisions of the business, creating separate technical infrastructure, organizations, and facilities. By the end of 1999 the fee for registration had been reduced, from $34.99,[26] to a wholesale rate of $6 per year to registered resellers.

In August 2009, Network Solutions notified customers that its "secure" servers were breached, and led to the exposure of names, address, and credit card numbers of 573,928 people who made purchases on Web sites hosted by the company. Susan Wade, a spokesperson for Network Solutions, said, "We really feel terrible about this." At the time of this writing, NSI does not know how their servers were compromised.

One year later in August 2010, Network Solutions discovered that one of their widgets offered to their domain registration and hosting customers was capable of distributing malware by sites displaying it. As many as 5,000,000 of their registered domains may have been affected by the hack. The affected widget was at least temporarily addressed by Network Solutions, who were able to make changes to the code to prevent it from loading.[27]

In January, 2014 Network Solutions' marketing department sent an email to customers stating that the company would be automatically enrolling customers in a new security program called WebLock, for an initial charge of $1,850 for the first year and $1,350 each subsequent year. The company claimed the cost offset new security features to protect domains, including registering as a "certified user" and confirmation of configuration changes with those "certified users".[28]

... To help recapture the costs of maintaining this extra level of security for your account, your credit card will be billed $1,850 for the first year of service on the date your program goes live... After that you will be billed $1,350 on every subsequent year from that date. If you wish to opt out of this program you may do so by calling us at 1-888-642-0265.

Web.com COO Jason Teichman later clarified that the program would actually be opt-in, saying "we did not do a good job in wording that [email]" and "It's not our intention to enroll anyone in a program they don’t want."[29]

Network Solutions offers a search engine which permits users to find out if a domain name is available for purchase.[30] Unregistered domain names entered into this search engine are then speculatively reserved by Network Solutions.[30] This "reservation" can be removed by anyone immediately by contacting Network Solutions customer service hotline, or it will automatically unreserve within four days, allowing the domain to be freely registered anywhere. Also, visitors searching for domain names on their website allow the reservation when they click "OK" on the Reservation Confirmation dialog box. Clicking "Cancel" will prevent the domain name from being reserved.

On January 8, 2008, Domain Name Wire published a story alleging that Network Solutions practices domain name front running.[30] "If you try to register a domain at Network Solutions, but decide not to register it, you won’t be able to register it anywhere else," the article says.[30] "Network Solutions registers the domain in its company name with the words 'This Domain is available at NetworkSolutions.com'."[30] Circle ID reported on January 8, 2008, that Jonathon Nevett, Vice President of Policy at Network Solutions and one of the seven members of the ICANN community who was consulted by the ICANN committee looking at registrar abuse of domain "tasting," as the availability search practice is called,[31] had offered a response to the news story stating Network Solutions' policy.[32] The policy was "a security measure to protect our customers," said Nevett.[32] "When a customer searches for an available domain name at our website, but decides not to purchase the name immediately after conducting the search," Nevett added, "after the search ends, we will put the domain name on reserve."[32] Nevett said that if the domain was "not purchased within 4 days, it will be released back to the registry and will be generally available for registration."[30] But once a name was supposedly "reserved" for a potential customer, not only was it not available at any less expensive registrar, but the fee charged by Network Solutions went up to $35 instead of the original fee charged of around $10.

Jay Westerdal, one of the seven members of the ICANN community who was consulted by the ICANN committee looking at domain tasting abuse,[31] published an article on Domain Tools on January 8, 2008 stating that Network Solutions is exposing the domains to domain tasters.[33] The domain tasters "will snipe those domain up milliseconds after Network Solutions deletes them," says Westerdal.[33] "It is a deplorable action that Network Solutions would announce potential domain names to the entire world," Westerdal added.[33] On January 8, 2008, Tucows, the largest publicly traded domain name registrar, published an article on its company web site titled "Registrar Reputation and Trust" criticizing Network Solutions policy.[34] "Potential Registrants are effectively forced to purchase the domain from Network Solutions for a period of four days at which point the domain is dropped," wrote Tucows employee James Koole.[34] Koole says that Tucows has found a way to address the issue of domain tasting and has policies in place that uphold the rights of Registrants.[34] "Tucows works to prevent domain name tasting by charging our Resellers a monetary fee on domain name registrations that are cancelled within the five-day Add Grace Period (AGP)," Koole said.[34] "Tucows doesn’t use WHOIS query data or search data from our API to front-run domain names," Koole added.[34]

On January 9, 2008, Cnet reported that Network Solutions will soon not register domains when people search for domains from the company's Whois search page, will offer only an "under construction" page for sites that it has reserved, and newly reserved pages won't be linked to the numerical Internet addresses that allow Web browsers to locate the pages.[35] Network Solutions will continue to register domains when people search for domains from the company's home page.[35]

There is evidence that there are parties subscribing to this information which are buying some of these domains within milliseconds of them being de-registered.[31][33] This occurs for thousands upon thousands of domains, with a certain percentage then eventually being bought by the original party, providing a profit.[31][33]

In March 2008, "Fitnathemovie.com", a website that Dutch politician Geert Wilders had reserved at Network Solutions, was taken offline. Wilders intended to host a film he had created, Fitna. At that time, the only page on the site was a picture of the Qur'an accompanied by the text "Geert Wilders presents Fitna" and "Coming soon". Network Solutions' notice stated that they were "investigating whether the site's content is in violation of the Network Solutions Acceptable Use Policy".[37] Wilders said the 15-minute film will show how verses from the Qur'an are being used today to incite modern Muslims to behave violently and anti-democratically.[38]

As a result of Network Solutions' decision, "fitnathemovie.com" was not available to the public on the day of the film's release. Wilders expressed his displeasure with Network Solutions for pre-censoring the domain name.[citation needed]

Network Solutions also came under criticism because although they refused to host Wilders' website,[39] they had provided registration services for the Hezbollah domain hizbollah.org.[40] In response to these criticisms, Network Solutions agreed that hizbollah.org violated their acceptable use policy and ceased hosting that web site, as well.[citation needed]

Due to heavy media coverage, many people were aware of the film's existence and the controversy surrounding its domain name. Some were outraged by the actions of Network Solutions in dealing with one of its customers. Freedom of speech protestors created videos commenting on the situation, and some uploaded Wilders' film to social networking sites such as YouTube shortly after its release. Protestors for both sides created their own blogs and video statements on the matter. Anti-censorship protestors took their campaigns to sites such as YouTube in order to alert others of the situation.[41] On March 23, 2008, Brian Krebs of the Washington Post published an article explaining more facts related to the event. Krebs wrote that Network Solutions spokesperson Susan Wade stated that Network Solutions had received several complaints regarding the website, but she did not elaborate on the specific nature of the complaints.[42]

Recent[when?] reports indicate that in addition to the aforementioned front-running practices, Network Solutions has begun exploiting an obscure provision of its end-user license agreement that permits it to use and advertise on its users' unassigned subdomains, even despite the registration and private ownership of the top-level domain itself.[43] The provision states:

'You also agree that any domain name directory, sub-directory, file name or path (e.g.) that does not resolve to an active web page on your Web site being hosted by Network Solutions, may be used by Network Solutions to place a "parking" page, "under construction" page, or other temporary page that may include promotions and advertisements for, and links to, Network Solutions' Web site...'"[44]

Ars Technica has documented how to opt out of this scheme,[45] but many[who?] private domain holders and privacy advocates cite the move as another step in Network Solutions' series of recent attempts to push the boundaries of profitability and responsibility in its domain practices.[citation needed][46]

According to a Wired.com article, in 1999 Network Solutions bungled the transfer of "races.com", accidentally placing it back into the pool of available domain names. MBA student John McLanahan purchased the domain privately for thousands of dollars. A domain name speculator was able to obtain it, and demanded $500,000 for its return.[47]

In April 2015, the Federal Trade Commission announced that Network Solutions had agreed to settle charges that it misled consumers who bought web hosting services by promising a full refund if they canceled within 30 days. In reality, the FTC stated, the company withheld substantial cancellation fees amounting to up to 30 percent of the refund.[48]

Update - on 06-08-2017 Network Solutions began offering their customers an extension to their refund policy. Customers of Network Solutions now have 45 days after the initial purchase to decide if they would like to continue utilizing their domain name registrations and hosting packages.